Sunday, 5 October 2014

Halloween stories

I already wrote a post on Halloween in French tonight, however I am writing a second one for my countdown to Halloween. I have recently finished (as in: today) Halloween: Magic, Mystery and the Macabre. I plugged it last year, but then I had only read one story of the book. I read them all now. I will come back to specific ones, by specific authors, as of course I have my favourite. But overall the book is a great read and I want to recommend it for all my Halloween loving readers.

Little observation here: while most of the stories have elements of supernatural, not all of them are properly speaking horror stories. Some while supernatural are not scary or even meant to be scary, Some belong more to the scifi genre and at least one is a what I would qualify as scifi allegory. But all use Halloween as a driving force and use it to great effects. And there are genuinely scary moments in many of them, even those that are not supernatural tales of terror. It matters a lot to me: Halloween still needs to give a good chill. And what I love of the scary ones is that they are not necessarily gore fests. Very little is needed to cause terror and the authors know it well. Anyway I intend to blog more about them and do not wish to spoil the read for you. Please get your hands on a copy.